Jerry Summers
In spite of the glowing assurance by the Chief of Staff for the Choo Choo City administration the explanation of the holdup on the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) negotiations remains vague and unexplained in spite of it affecting 385,000 individuals in the non-metro county of Hamilton and its satellite cities.
What is a CBA?
Since there is no final signed document a general description from the world wide web is a starting place to let the public guess what the term means:
“A CBA is a legally enforceable contract between a coalition of community-based organizations and the developer of a proposed project. In exchange for the coalition’s public support of the project in the approval process, the developer agrees to contribute benefits to the local community if the project moves forward.”
A timely article in Adolph Och’s original publication (before merger) on 4/11/24 presents a little more of the murky picture on the potential topics of “living wages, affordable housing, environmental concessions from developers, etc.”
Since “transparency” has always been the frequently cited goal of our elected officials, now might be a good time for a frank and candid discussion of both the positive and negative aspects of the monumental South Broad District project before the taxpayer public exposure rises again from the original 80M to 120M but down to 115M, due to the generosity of the minor league baseball billionaires.
Complete and open discussions are just a part of the historical “Chattanooga Way”!
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You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com